Supporting Early Literacy in Montessori Classrooms

The first six years of a child’s life are essential for establishing language development. Dr. Montessori observed and identified a heightened sensitivity for reading from ages 3 to 5 ½ years old and for writing from ages 3 ½ to 4 ½ years old.

Students in our Montessori classrooms at every level have daily opportunities to develop fine motor skills, work with a variety of creative art mediums, and play sound games to build a solid foundation for proficiency in reading. As students progress into the Primary or early childhood classrooms, they learn the phonetic sounds of letters and work through a structured introduction of the English language. This includes reading, writing, and comprehension activities.

Children thrive when early literacy experiences are fun, verbal, and stimulating. While daily conversations are an important part of the journey, additional wordplay includes singing and reciting familiar songs, nursery rhymes, poems, and games. These oral and auditory experiences help children develop phonemic awareness through the act of noticing, thinking about, and working with the individual sounds in words. These wordplay activities take place in both individual and large group interactions.

One group game that is often played in our Montessori classrooms is the Silence Game. During this activity, the children learn to make their bodies as still and quiet as possible, and then really listen to see what they can hear. Lesson extensions offer opportunities to introduce vocabulary as needed to define and describe the sounds to develop important early literacy skills that are both oral and auditory.

To support your child, consider playing word games on your way to school each morning!

Play the Silence Game as a family.
While the driver keeps their eyes on the road, the other passengers can choose to close their eyes to make the game more challenging. Are you hearing a bus or a motorcycle? Is it in front of, next to, or behind the car? Who made the first sound inside the vehicle? Mom in front of me or baby sister next to me? Was that a sigh or a giggle? Adding prepositions and identifying directions helps build vocabulary and spatial awareness.

Sing songs together.
Singing familiar songs can help your child build proficiency with phonemic awareness skills. Allow your child to sing solo when the key words occur, for instance: “Old McDonald had a _____,” or “The wheels on the bus go _____.”

Share rhyming words.
Words rhyme when we hear the same middle and ending sound. To start, have your child give you a prompt word, such as “dad.” Model rhyming with a simple response, “pad.” Then, take turns being the one giving the first word. More advanced experiences can be played to see how many words you can generate after a single word prompt. For example: dad, pad, mad, sad, add, bad, glad, etc. Extend the lesson by defining words that may be new to your child to support their budding comprehension skills.

Play I Spy with sounds.
Modify the well-known “I spy” game by adding a twist. Use a letter to give clues and watch your child make new letter connections. It might go something like this: “I spy something that begins with the letter g. That’s right! A gas station!”

Language arts instruction is not limited to one curricular area, place, or time within the students’ classroom experience. Practical Life activities offer a natural foundation for language development. Examples include:

• Care of self (hand washing, snack), care of environment (table setting, flower arranging, plant and/or animal care), and care of others (preparing and serving snacks). Each experience provides opportunities for vocabulary introduction.
  
• The actions of pouring, transferring, tying, buckling, etc., each establish a concern for quality, order, and accuracy, and assist in the development of fine motor skills as well as attention to left-to-right patterns.
  
• Scrubbing plates (or pumpkins, or tables, or chairs, or mirrors, etc.) helps lengthen concentration span, which is another critical marker for reading and language arts development.
  
• Creative works offer opportunities to develop the fine motor skills needed to control writing implements. Chalk and chalkboard opportunities are frequently offered to help children refine control of their early markings.

At home, consider all the practical ways you can involve your child in the art of daily living as a contributing member of the family and introduce lots of vocabulary along the way!